• Happy holidays, folks! Thanks to each and every one of you for being part of the Tom's Hardware community!

Microsoft Security Essentials Fails AV-Test Certification

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Status
Not open for further replies.
[citation][nom]kawininjazx[/nom]In my personal experience, Security Essentials find more threats than anything else I have used.[/citation]

Probably false positives...
 
[citation][nom]extremepcs[/nom]But MSE doesn't turn your i7 system into a 486. THAT is why I use it.[/citation]
neither does avast, and it actually finds threats, that's why I use it.
 
Take these results with a grain of salt. No "security suite" is perfect for every situation. If you maintain proper browsing and e-mail habits, MSE and Defender (Win8) are perfectly capable and even better when Malwarebyte's AntiMalware is used along side. That's not to say there aren't better solutions available, but if your browsing habits aren't negligent (browsing questionable sites, downloading every attachment from e-mail, etc), there's little reason to pay for the "major brand" software.
 
"According to this chart, Microsoft Security Essentials (both 4.0 and 4.1) scored a 69 in September and a 64 in October regarding protection against 0-day malware attacks (inclusive of web and e-mail threats) – the industry average is a score of 89. In detecting widespread and prevalent malware, the suite scored a 100, and in detecting a representative set of malware discovered in the last 2-3 months, it scored a 90. Combine those three scores, and Microsoft Security Essentials received a Protection Score of 1.5 out of 6.0."

so it scored a

64 out of 100
100 out of 100
90 out of 100

and that equals a 1.5 out of 6.0 ??

must be some crazy german math going on somewhere in there ...just sayin'
 
[citation][nom]scythe944[/nom]neither does avast, and it actually finds threats, that's why I use it.[/citation]
Last time I ran Avast, it was harder on system performance that Vista at launch....
 
[citation][nom]jaquith[/nom]What I've learned is simple, your AV is as good as it's last set of definitions. So to truly gauge an AV 'properly' you'd need to examine months of data.[/citation]
In a lot of cases, the AV is only as good as the user is intelligent...
 
I dunno. I like Avira personally, if the person wants to use something else go ahead and let them. No reason to try and sway them as they won't listen. I also run Comodo and Malware Bytes with modified rules (Nothing to crazy just made it a bit stricter in asking for permission about what an application can and can't do)

The only thing that holds me back from just installing avira on family members systems over an unobtrusive AV like MSE is that it has a friggin popup type ad every time it updates.
 
[citation][nom]Cats_Paw[/nom]Essentials is exactly what its name says: Its essential to have it, not the ultimate weapon.Every decent user knows that esentials is an aditional help, but th main must be something else.[/citation]Are you saying to run two antivirus programs?

I usually recommend MSE with Malwarebytes, but not two full blow AV suites like say MSE and McAfee.
 
[citation][nom]ThisIsMe[/nom]"According to this chart, Microsoft Security Essentials (both 4.0 and 4.1) scored a 69 in September and a 64 in October regarding protection against 0-day malware attacks (inclusive of web and e-mail threats) – the industry average is a score of 89. In detecting widespread and prevalent malware, the suite scored a 100, and in detecting a representative set of malware discovered in the last 2-3 months, it scored a 90. Combine those three scores, and Microsoft Security Essentials received a Protection Score of 1.5 out of 6.0."so it scored a64 out of 100, 100 out of 100, 90 out of 100and that equals a 1.5 out of 6.0 ??must be some crazy german math going on somewhere in there ...just sayin'[/citation]

Always take these with a grain of salt. The points could be coming from where they rate compared to the competition than the actual test results. 64 is way under the average of 89, 90 is below the average of 97, and 100 is average for the last test. So if you were directly comparing the test results to the rest of the field, it's easy to see where they came up with 1.5 out of 6.0.

[citation][nom]sykozis[/nom]Last time I ran Avast, it was harder on system performance that Vista at launch....[/citation]

I run this on all the machines for my company. The only machine that had a noticable difference only had 2 GB of ram with Win 7 Pro x64, which that is the minimum amount of RAM needed to run the O.S. Needless to say, after I added more RAM, no more slowdowns.
 

The last 'virus' I've picked-up was from all places WhitePages.com through a JAVA exploit banner ad.

So as you stated 'a lot' vs 'all' cases. I'm not a BitTorrent or other 'sites' kinda gut, but crap happens.
 
I generally rate antivirus not by their detection rates, but by how many systems come to our company's bench with problems caused by the AV screwing shit up. Lately, McAfee has been the #1 culprit for breaking systems quickly followed by Kaspersky. Right after that in 3rd is AVG. We sell mostly NOD32, and rarely see it come back causing problems..... although that might change, we have had a few problems come back in the last 2 weeks.

When people don't want NOD32, we usually sell them Malwarebytes Pro and install MSE along side it. That seems to be a great combo as we rarely see those come back infected.

I also must mention that the worst piece of malware I've ever had to remove on a client's machine was AVG Secure Search. It embedded itself into Firefox's new tab window by actually modifying a DLL. It was not possible to remove it even after being uinstalled properly, and then using AVG removal tools. No setting could get the normal tab window back. Firefox had to be uninstalled, and the install folder deleted followed by a reinstall. You know you've got a BAD antivirus on your hands when it's worse than the malware it's supposed to protect you from.



 
I like it because it is better than others at detecting threats. It doesn't do anything for web or mail, which I prefer. I use other methods for those. It runs as a service in the background and in general stays out of the way and uses very little resources. Keep up the good work Microsoft.
 
The more I read on this site the more I feel like ditching it. MSE has been good to me, but as usual the best anti virus is a well educated self.
 
Security Essentials is more than adequate for most power users and as the name implies its the basic protection. Haven't had a single virus/malware (not counting the laughable "cookie malware hits" that most scanners report just so that they can report something other than the system is clean each time) for the past 15 years :)

Use of the brain the easily the best malware deterrence... Don't click those you have won 1 zillion dollars, free porn or penis enlargement links. Dont follow the links to blizzard.com.cn in the weekly emails claiming the wow account have been compromised for the zillionth time. Its not much harder than that really!
 
Unlike Avast which I tested, MSE is light on resources and doesn't slow down the PC. It works fine for me so far.
You can have the best antivirus in the world, if you put a click happy user who has no clue about what he's doing and spends all his time downloading crappy torrents and browsing porn sites with outdated browsers, it's only a matter of time before the antivirus is defeated and you can prepare yourself for cleaning-up the PC manually...
 
I'm very happy with Avast the quick scan is substantially faster than AVG. I like MSE's simple interface and it is light on your PC but I have found it "flimsy" in comparison to AVG and Avast.

Does anybody know anything about ESET? Thinking of getting it for a few office PCs
 
[citation][nom]Botia[/nom]I like it because it is better than others at detecting threats. It doesn't do anything for web or mail, which I prefer. I use other methods for those. It runs as a service in the background and in general stays out of the way and uses very little resources. Keep up the good work Microsoft.[/citation]

Absolutely! you hit the nail on the head, couldn't agree more.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom